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We were in need of a family holiday recently so took a short trip to Berlin at the end of May. What we discovered was a modern, fun, interesting city which was also baby-friendly (Kitty was just coming up to 15 months). Here’s a little guide for anyone looking for a city break to keep the adults and babes in your family happy.

First off, get the Like a Local app. Specifically designed to help you avoid the tourist traps, all the food/shopping/sightseeing tips are recommended by locals to the area. We’ve used this wonderful guide in Tallinn, Stockholm, Barcelona and Berlin, and it never fails. What’s more, you can download maps to use offline while wandering around!

We stayed at Leonardo Hotel, which was fantastic and well-situated between Alexanderplatz (central transport hub of the Mitte district) and the hip neighbourhood of Prenzlauer Berg.

We found the transport systems (trams, the underground and overground trains) reliable and easy to use. Kitty loves people-watching and spent all our journeys grinning at strangers!

Eating

We ate huge pizzas at I Due Forni, great fast burgers at O Der Burger and insanely delicious and inventive burgers at Bun Bao. (Mine was a tuna steak with sweet potato fries. YES) Berlin is rife with vegetarian, vegan and gluten free places to eat, especially in the Prenzlauer Berg area.

There are various supermarkets all over the city (including ALDI and LIDL), but as we were passing we picked up some groceries from hip organic store LPG Biomarkt.

Shopping

We’re avid flea market fans, so were thrilled to discover the Mauerpark flea which was recommended to us by various friends. It’s an all-day event, and is ENORMOUS. Wear comfy shoes, you’ll spend all day there. Later in the day, neighbouring Mauerpark fills up with music and people relaxing, dancing and drinking in the sun. Wonderful festival atmosphere! There are lots of great places to eat nearby; O Der Burger is just across the road.

Another good flea/antiques market (which sells itself as the original) is the Trodel Markt, which takes place on Saturday mornings next to the Tiergarten underground station.

We also loved the Humana chain of secondhand and vintage clothes. We visited the Alexanderplatz branch and the huge store (five floors!) near Friedrichshain underground station.

Just wandering around Berlin you will stumble across interesting shops. Keep your eyes peeled!

Doing

I was really conscious that Kitty would be spending a lot of her time sitting in her pushchair, and luckily she is pretty happy observing the world around her. However, I wanted to make sure she had some time to play every day. This is where Berlin really comes into its own, with its wealth of child-friendly “kindercafés” spread across the city. Almost every café we went to for lunch had a sandpit!

Giraffe, in Tiergarten, has an expansive baby-friendly menu and great outdoor sandpit. Afterwards, take a stroll in beautiful Tiergarten, Berlin’s enormous city park.

There’s also a great sandpit and play area near the LPG supermarket, and playgrounds in every park we walked through. Another excellent café is Kiezkind, which has both outdoor and indoor sandpits!

We took Kitty on an open-top bus tour, and she lasted around an hour before she got bored and, ahem, demanded to get off. So instead spent an enjoyable hour climbing up the stairs of the concert hall in Gendarmenmarkt square. She also thoroughly enjoyed crawling around and looking at the animals in the small but very interesting Natural History museum.

Berlin also boasts several vintage photobooths, which have been restored to their former retro glory. For a mere €2 you can take home some adorable family snaps. We’ll treasure ours for years to come. You’ll probably spot them wandering around the city but you can also find a map of their whereabouts here.

We also visited the Berlin wall and went up the TV Tower for terrific views across the city. There were lots of things we didn’t do (the zoo, Ramones museum, Museum of Things) – but whatever you do, it will be great fun. For more recommendations check out the fantastic resource that is Berlin For All the Family – wish I’d seen it before we went!

Just wandering around Berlin you’ll see all sorts of lovely, colourful, interesting sights – the true mark of a great city. I think you’ll love it 0r whether you have kids or not!

I’ll admit I’m a little (OK, a lot) late to the Deliciously Ella party, but I have officially joined in. When I spotted her latest cookbook in the library where I work, I had a quick flick through, then a proper look…followed by page marking, and then scribbling down a shopping list. It’s safe to say I’m now hooked.

One of the things that really appeals to me about Ella’s recipes is how suitable they are for babies. Low in refined sugar and full of superfoods, I found myself looking at a whole host of baby-friendly ideas for mealtimes.

But for my first foray into Ella’s recipes, I wanted to try something sweet. I inherited my sweet tooth from my dad and am used to baking with butter, chocolate and vanilla sugar, so I was really curious about using more unusual store cupboard ingredients to make a dessert.

So I merrily set about gathering ingredients for brownies…you know, cocoa powder, milk, apple purée, chia seeds, black beans… Yep, the main ingredient in these brownies is black beans. And yes, it totally works!

I treated my husband and various friends to these brownies, and they were a hit. What’s more, they’re gluten free and vegan if you use plant-based milk (I cheated and used cow’s milk). The chia seeds are soaked first so become gelatinous and help to create the lovely gooey texture, and raisins add a great plump chewiness. Oh yes, and Kitty loved them too.

I wouldn’t say they’re necessarily more tasty than a traditional chocolate brownie (because not much can beat that!) but they are very interesting, and extremely moreish. Plus, it’s great to feel kind of healthy while eating a delicious dessert…because when does that ever happen!?

– Soak the chia seeds in 140ml water for about 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 180°C (fan 160°C).

– Place all the ingredients – except the raisins – into a food processor and blend until smooth. Stir in the raisins until evenly mixed.

– Line a baking dish with baking parchment, then pour in the brownie mix and spread it out.

– Bake for about 40 minutes, or until a knife comes out almost clean. Let the brownies cool for about 45 minutes in the tin; this is really important as they continue to set during this time. Cut into rectangles.

– Store in an airtight tin for up to 5 days. But chances are they won’t last that long!

Note from Ella: It’s very important that you leave the brownies to cool as that’s when they set. They’re not totally solid when they come out of the oven, so please have patience!

On our wild garlic hunt a couple of weeks ago, we stopped off in the picturesque nearby town of Llangollen. The weather was (finally!) beautiful, and it was so lovely to spend a gentle day of wandering with Jim and our funny little babe. I’ve been using my digital camera a lot more lately, determined to capture Kitty’s final baby days as much as possible. She is growing so quickly and recently started having the odd tantrum – toddler-dom is imminent!

Kitty is now 14 months old and getting more curious and aware of things every day. She copies us, doing pretend coughing and brushing her hair. She love to pull her socks off in the car, and is obsessed with lids. She loves watching other children. We’ve started planning holidays, camping, picnicking in the garden. I’m looking forward to beach days, sandy palms, sunhats, chubby baby legs, grass stains and ice cream cheeks. Those long summer days and the lovely sweet suncream smell that comes with them.

Oh, poor neglected blog! I would like to blame my extended blogging hiatus on returning to work, family illness, or embarking on a new house project… but despite all these things, I must admit that having a baby really kind of kicked my ass. Don’t get me wrong, I love being a mother, and my daughter is an absolute delight, but since having a baby I’ve really struggled to fit in all those things I used to love to do. Blog. Take photographs with my camera. Knit. Bake! Only now, 14 months later, am I slowly starting to get back into everything. Having a baby is all-encompassing, but it is nice to think about me again…and this poor little blog, which I plan to start updating regularly. So why not begin with a recipe!

Last week, when the weather turned warm (hooray!), we took a trip out into the countryside. We are in the process of renovating a house in the hills near Wrexham so went for a drive up there. The sun was warm, the air clear and the strong scent of wild garlic all around. We picked a large handful, as I’d been keen to find some ever since hearing about a recipe for wild garlic and cheese scones on the radio a couple of months ago.

Later, once Kitty was asleep, I whipped up a batch of these scones. They only require a few ingredients and are really quick and easy to make. And they taste delicious warm from the oven – with lashings of butter, of course. If, like me, you like your garlic strong, you’ll love them! Head on over to Emma Bradshaw’s blog for the recipe. And go get foraging!

I tend to get a bit ranty on the subject of birth stories, as so many people seem to love sharing their own horror tales, or those of others. I don’t see this as being at all helpful to women who are pregnant for the first time, who are anxious enough as it is, who don’t need to hear flippant comments and gory details about labour. While pregnant, I much preferred to read about wonderful positive birth stories in books such as Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth. I know that not all labours go as planned, however I found it immensely empowering to read about women who gave birth surrounded by love and calmness.

I tried to approach my labour with an open mind, aware that I might not get the room with the pool, or that things might go awry. I found no solace in dwelling on scary scenarios, instead choosing to focus on tales of positivity. I was frightened about labour and these stories gave me strength. Today I’d like to share my own birth story, which is a very positive one. I realise I am lucky to have had a smooth, relatively easy labour, but hopefully my story will give other first-time mothers strength too.

Throughout my pregnancy I had been worried about the labour – not knowing what to expect, and whether I could even do it at all! But whenever I was in work, I would look around and think “All of these people were born!” Such an obvious, trite statement, but thinking of all the millions of women who had given birth before me made me feel like I could do it too.

My bump was always low and on the small side – so much so that I had bump envy most of the way through! In the last few weeks before Kitty was born, my midwife told me multiple times that I was “all baby”, and she was sure I wouldn’t go full term. From around week 34 the baby’s head was engaged – and boy could I feel it! Sure enough, Kitty arrived 11 days early, putting me at 38 weeks +3 days. On the Thursday evening before I went into labour, I experienced three hours of regular contractions, which weren’t painful and disappeared when I went to sleep. I realise now that my body was gearing up for labour. We had a really busy weekend, going to a gig, seeing friends and going out for tea, and really I think that helped to speed things up – for at 3.30am on the Sunday morning, I woke up to pains in my lower back and abdomen. I lay still for a little while, letting the idea that I was in labour sink in. Then I got up and woke Jim, unable to keep the news to myself.

For the next few hours the contractions very slowly got stronger, and we dithered around, knowing there was no way we would go back to sleep. I had a shower, ate some cereal, got our hospital bags together and dressed in comfortable clothes. As the contractions got more uncomfortable, I sat and rolled around on a birthing ball, until at 9am I demanded that we go to the hospital.

We live very close to our local hospital, and decided to walk there with our pram, so I could lean on it every now and then. A normally five-minute journey on foot ended up taking about half an hour! But moving around really helped to ease the increasing pain of my contractions. I was well aware that I would probably be sent home again, and sure enough, upon examination I was only 2cm dilated – which was better than I had expected! I was using breathing techniques which I’d learned at my local Daisy Birthing class (so helpful, I would definitely recommend!). Because of this the midwife kept telling me that she was impressed at how calm I was, which in turn made me feel stronger and more calm.

I was given a low dose of cocodamol for the pain, which I threw up. It turns out food was not my friend that day, as this happened every time I tried to eat something – the most I managed was an ice lolly! I knew this wasn’t going to aid my strength during labour, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. We headed home, and I began to use the TENS machine I had borrowed from a friend. I found the relief wonderful, but the contractions got pretty intense as the morning went on. I lay on the sofa and we timed the contractions while listening to the radio. Jim and I had both been worried about knowing when would be the “right time” to return to the hospital, but at around 2pm I was really struggling to cope. This time we drove there!

Upon arrival, I was examined again, all the while praying “Please don’t send me home again!” Fortunately I was 4cm dilated, and even better, the pool room in the midwifery-led unit had recently been vacated! I felt very lucky that I would have the room I had wanted. So the TENs machine came off and at around 4pm I got in the pool, which was very soothing and allowed me to experiment with various positions. Our midwives changed shifts, and I hoped our new one would be as good as the lady who had just left. She was brilliant. It was just me, Jim and our new midwife, Zara, and for the most part she left us to it, now and then coming over to check how we were doing and calmly chat to us.

By this point I was using gas and air, which, rather than dulling the pain only seemed to make me groggy and dry-mouthed, but it did help me to concentrate on my breathing. Zara kept saying how calm I was, but as the afternoon wore on I felt my control slipping. The contractions were getting really intense and a couple of times I dropped the F-bomb, and one time I simply shouted out “Help!” I can’t really say that the contractions were painful, to me they just felt incredibly intense and just as everyone told me – like I needed to do a really big poo!

The whole time Jim sat by my side, passing me cold water to sip and the gas and air when I needed it. He was great, and so supportive, as was Zara. At one point, when I asked her whether I should resist pushing, she said that she wouldn’t be examining me. She told me to trust my body and if I felt like I needed to push, I should do it. This moment came at around 7pm, and I’m not going to lie – it was scary. Really pretty scary! But also quite exciting, as I knew our baby would soon be with us.

At this point a second midwife arrived, and I started to push. This process seemed quite drawn out, and with every push Zara would say “The baby’s head will be out on the next push!” and each time it wasn’t, for which I kept apologising! Eventually, though, the head began to crown, with immense stinging that floored me. This for me was the hardest part, but I knew I had to endure it only briefly. I had really wanted to avoid giving birth on my back, going against gravity etc. But the midwives needed to see what was going on! They also asked if I wanted to see the baby’s head with a mirror (no thanks), and then to touch it (NO THANKS!). Once the baby’s head was out the body felt so easy in comparison, and our little girl was born at 7.17pm, on Sunday 8th March (International Women’s Day!), weighing 7 pounds 5½ oz. In all I was pushing for 27 minutes, and on record my labour was 5 and a half hours.

And then she was on my chest, her pink body scrunched up and covered in vernix. We put a hat on her and she cried softly, and Jim and I gazed at her with tears in our eyes. The midwives asked us what her name was, and without hesitation we looked at each other and said “Kitty”. Once Jim had cut the cord, he had a wonderful hour of skin-to-skin cuddling with her, while I pushed out the placenta. This was not what I had expected! It took almost an hour to get rid of that bad boy, and I felt so exhausted from lack of food and of course the labour. Five minutes before I was to be given the injection to help the placenta along, I did it, and felt the most immense relief. Kitty was placed on my chest and began to greedily breastfeed right away, which was amazing. I had done it!

I had such a textbook labour that we were told we could go home that same evening, if we wanted. The thought of me and Kitty being in the hospital without Jim made me feel quite sad, so we decided to go home. Living so close to the hospital reassured me, knowing the labour ward was only next door if we needed anything. Our parents came to the hospital and helped us take Kitty home. It was surreal walking through our front door with her at midnight, and we sat and ate cereal and stared at her. Needless to say, that night I got zero sleep, starting at every snuffle and sigh, constantly astonished at the little person we had made.

So I hope that my positive birth story can bring strength and hope to other first-time mothers. Yes, bad things can happen in labour, but sometimes it all goes smoothly. I felt like I had been beaten up for the first few days after Kitty’s birth, but I also felt incredible – superhuman, in fact! Like all mothers, who are superhuman however their little people came into the world. High five, mamas.

We are thrilled to announce the arrival of our daughter, Kitty Cosmo Ashworth, on Sunday 8th March – International Women’s Day, no less! She arrived 11 days early, at 7.17pm, weighing 7lb 5½oz. We have spent the past four weeks getting to know our new little friend, and coming to terms with everything that goes along with a newborn – plenty of sleepless nights, groggy mornings and cobbled-together meals. But also plenty of cuddles, kisses, and a huge feeling of awe that we have created such a beautiful little person. She is our best and favourite new thing. Forgive me while this space stays quiet for a while – I will be back when we have this whole baby thing a bit more figured out. And in the meantime: photos!

Although we plan to have our baby sleeping in our room for the first six months of her life, we recently spent a bit of time organising our spare bedroom into something of a “nursery”. A place for her clothes to live, somewhere to change her, and a quiet space for me to feed her during the night. Luckily, our spare bedroom was was already painted pink – very handy when we discovered we were having a girl! So all that was left was some sorting and clearing out, adding shelves for my craft books (rather than the, ahem, pile on the floor) and children’s books and toys, and folding away some tiny lady clothes.

We bought an antique chest of drawers for storage, and I succumbed to the lure of Elisabeth Dunker’s famous Pirum Parum poster, which I’ve been lusting after for years! It also happily ties in with the loose pink and grey colour scheme of the room. We made shelves out of the original floorboards from our house, and used antique brackets to attach them to the walls. I have already amassed a small – but growing – collection of adorable knitted cardigans, some gifts and some vintage. I think I need that pink cabled wonder in my size!

I have an old pretty nursing chair, and paired with a sheepskin rug, it will be a cosy place to sit with our baby. I love this room, and although the nursery will also double as a guest bedroom for now, we’ve made the most of the limited space in our little house. I sometimes find myself standing in the doorway, just looking around and taking in the quiet calm before the baby storm. Not long now, my due date is 16 days away!